SECTION B:  POLICY, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

Theme 4:  Higher Education

International Convenor: Terri Kim (Brunel University, UK)
Regional Convenor:  Mahdi Lahlou
Local Convenor:  Sreben Dizdar

Much of the debate in higher education policy and economics tends to remain within national boundaries – e.g. access and equity, effectiveness and efficiency in higher education governance and management, human resources development (HRD), international competitiveness, etc.
Thus, to speak of higher education systems moving from ‘elite to mass and to universal’ is now part of the convention of analysis of higher education systems; as is the kind of policy-formulation for higher education which emphasises class and gender and region development and ethnicity.

The main recent shift in the discussion has been its policy framing - from equality of opportunity to neo-liberal market principles and the contribution of higher education systems to the knowledge economy; an economic motif which has passed into the idea of an international higher education market in a context of globalisation and higher education services (e.g. GATS, FTA) and newer patterns of transnational academic mobility and educational migrations in the global knowledge economy. The tension is being worked out in the new European Higher Education Area (emerging with the new common degree (LMD) structures and the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), following the Bologna Process), and in the North American, and the Asia-Pacific regional FTAs, and also in Latin America (with MERCOSUR and ZICOSUR).

Therefore - noticing this ‘economistic’ emphasis on higher education, and moving on from it - a major question for this Thematic Group will be:

is there anything more, currently, to higher education systems than their links with the economy?

Do they celebrate anything which is universal, anything which might be judged as being of permanently sustaining value? How are traditional models of universities being re-negotiated in a world of globalisation and internationalisation for ‘togetherness’ and mutual understanding? In particular, what is the nature of the interculturality, which higher education systems are currently transmitting, and what is the nature of the new universalisms, which higher education systems are addressing now?

The WCCES Higher Education Thematic Group under the main theme, ‘Living Together, Education and Intercultural Dialogue’ will provide a forum for the comparative (and intercultural) discussion of such issues.